It is a fine commentary on how healthy the supposedly ill
classical recording industry is that Harmonia Mundi would begin
an "extensive series&quot of Schubert lieder in 2008. It
makes me feel we live in an ideal world rather than the real one
around us. Who is the premier Schubert voice in the world? The
best since his teacher, Fischer-Diskau? Despite the fact that in
the recent past, Hyperion issued a complete 40+ CD edition of
Schubert's lieder (in which he appears at least three times),
don't we really want to hear him sing as many more of them as
possible? In an ideal world.

Baritone Matthias Goerne has power and sweetness in perfect
proportion. He takes this music into his strong and perfect
hands and delivers it to the rapt silence of anyone within
listening distance. He already has a considerable discography of
Schubert (and Schumann, among others), but clearly this is a
statement project. Somebody somewhere in Harmonia Mundi with
great judgment and authority both has decided this has to
be done. Probably the same Somebody who got Planés Schubert
piano sonata series released as a set. Somebody with the
authority to make the ideal real. What with Goerne, Planès,
cellist Queyras, and pianist Paul Lewis, Harmonia Mundi is
building quite a stable.

I have heard Goerne often but never quite like this. The
sternness I seem to remember in his early recordings gave them a
sense of authority that was impossible to ignore, but it brought
with it a measure of aloofness too. In these songs, his great
bear of a voice has shed just enough of that early coolness to
become absolutely magnetic.

The fifteen songs that comprise this first volume of the series
represent nearly the full range of Schubert's life, from D. 113
to D. 938. Their texts are hard to take on their own terms—extravagantly romantic, the early nineteenth century as its most
melodramatic in the poetry of German romantics Leitner,
Schiller, Mayrhhofer, and Goethe. It is just as well it's all in
German! The music, however, travels powerfully into our time. As
with most romantic lied, I skim the texts to see what's mainly
up and then set them aside to let the composer have his way,
which, when it's Schubert he invariably does.

This recording is self-recommending for Schubert and lieder
fans. For the rest of you, even those with cold feet, I can
think of no better recording to begin with.

Before there was Marain Marais, beloved bass viol composer and
performer of the French baroque, there was his teacher,
Saint-Colombe, about whom little is known. Some of what we do
know (or thought we knew) was fictionalized memorably in Alain
Corneau's delightful French film, Tous les Matins du Monde,
based on a 1991 novel of the same name by Pascal Quignard.
Starring actor Gerard Dépardu as Marais and Jordi Savall's bass
viol as the heart of the film's soundtrack, the film gives us
hints of Sainte-Colombe as a reclusive lyric genius who wrote
and played music on the viol with enormous discipline and
exquisite touch, all to bring his deceased wife back to life.

Savall has recorded two CDs of Saint-Colombe's music for solo
viol, one of his suites for two. Margaret Little and Susie
Napper, who are Les Voix Humaines, have recorded eight
CD's of the suites for two, giving us all 67 of his works for
the two instruments. This is music for two equal voices, by the
way, not one voice with a continuo. Way too few of us know of
these recordings, which give us a Sainte-Colombe who is
sonorous, restrained, eloquent, and at time heart-breaking. That
ATMA would devote eight CD's to this music is to their
everlasting credit. They have become among my favorite
recordings.

If you consider yourself a fan of the cello and don't know
Saint-Colombe's work (or Marais' for that matter), you have
hours of delight in store. A bass viol can do things a cello
cannot, partly because of the instrument itself, partly because
of the earlier instrument's bow, which was designed to be more
flexible than a modern cello bow, at the cost of not being able
to play at the cello's volume in large rooms. The viol is a true
chamber instrument, which produces an intimate, sinewy, coppery
sound that can wrap itself around a feather without damaging it.
It can wail, sigh, hum, sing, flaunt, dart, swell, ebb, dance.
It can be enormously reflective, rich or subtle, jumping
gracefully from one sound to the other.

In the hands of these two highly skilled musicians, Saint-Colombe's
bass viol 'concerts'—or suites, as we call them when we get to
Bach's—are as moving to me as anything from the better known
Marais. Each is made up of a handful of short movements called
by the names of dances, as we expect, but which often sway and
wander more than dance. They are mainly melancholy, melancholy
being a more fruitful state of mind for art than happiness, as
we know.

I urge you to start out with one of these albums, each of which
offers a pair of CD's. If your musical sensibilities are
anything like mine, you'll be back for more.

Many of us fell in love with these infectious concertos in our
musical youth and then came to decide after many listenings that
we had outgrown them. Written to be played between the acts of
his operas as diversions to keep the audience's mind off the
scenery change going on behind them, they are just that.
Diversions, confections—easy to love but off by themselves,
surely not substantial enough to stick to the ribs. This
recording was sent as a gift, which I ungraciously set aside and
then picked up the other day for sentimental reasons. Good thing
I did.

This is far and away the best performance and recording of this
music I can remember: Egarr and his people make a strong case
for the solidity and excellence of these concertos without
sacrificing any of their charm and grace. If you are a Handel
buff, you'll love them. If you're new to the composer, you'll
love them. I love them.

Egarr is bringing new life to the Academy—all of the old
energy is here but a new level of eloquence and beauty as well.
The sound is as good as the performances—it's recorded in DSD
and is a hybrid CD/SACD but don't let that stop you. The CD
layer is terrific.

Bob Neill, in addition to being an occasional equipment and
regular music reviewer for Positive- Feedback Online, is also
proprietor of Amherst Audio in Amherst, Massachusetts, which
sells equipment from Audio Note, Blue Circle, Manley Labs, and
JM Reynaud, among others.